Free The Sweetest Love (Love Conquers All Book 5) by Victoria Wells

children I would never do what my parents did to me.”
    Donna couldn’t help but to feel an ache in the middle of her chest for Reba. To be abandoned by your mother at such a young age and then to have a physically abusive father wasn’t something any child deserved. It’s no wonder she fell into the hands of someone like Harold.
    The women blessed their food before Reba picked up with her story.
    Every morning Harold would be out maintaining the grounds. The first time he spoke to her she ignored him. No way was this good looking, older guy speaking to her.
    Reba never had much confidence in her looks. Perhaps it was because her father never let her forget how she looked just like her ugly, whorish mother. But the truth was she and her mother was both beautiful with their cinnamon complexions, pretty dark large eyes, full lips and thick, long brown hair.
    Thrift store clothes, no hint of makeup – not even a touch of lip gloss – and her hair tied in a knot at the back of her neck, in her opinion, made her look rather boring and plain.
    Finally, one day he blocked her path and wouldn’t let her by until she spoke. From that day on she’d made it a point to speak as she hurried out to catch her bus.
    “One morning my father started in on me because I forgot to pick up his shirts from the cleaners. I was upset and crying because I had a mid-term and I was going to be late.” Shaking her head, she let out a humorless laugh. “And good ‘ole Harold was waiting in the wings.”
    “Aw, baby, you too pretty to be crying,” he told her as he blocked her path.
    “Please leave me alone. I’m already late for class and I have a test today,” she sniffed, wiping away tears.
    Harold blocked her again as she tried walking around him. “Damn baby, why didn’t you say so. I’ll give you a ride… have you there in no time. Let me just put this lawnmower away.”
    Reba nervously looked over her shoulder. “I-I-I can’t. My father—”
    “Just sped off a few minutes ago,” he grinned, winking at Reba.
    Looking back again she weighed the consequences of someone seeing her with Harold or possibly missing her test and getting a zero. Getting a zero was out of the question since her scholarship was conditional on her academic performance. Taking a chance, she followed him to his car.
    Looking across the table at Donna, she swore, “I didn’t know he was married. He never said anything about having a wife or a girlfriend. I thought because he had his own apartment—”
    “He wasn’t attached,” Donna finished for her.
    She’d been stunned to learn her then husband had living quarters elsewhere. Donna had no clue that one of the benefits of being groundskeeper was a one bedroom apartment on the premises. When he stayed out all night she figured he was out with his drinking buddies or at some cheap motel with another woman. The rude awakening came when a man appeared banging on her door, yelling something about her husband and his whore at the Bromley Apartments. That man was Reba’s father.
    “I didn’t find out until later…” Reba confessed.
    Reba made Harold promise that her father would never find out about them until she was out from under his roof. She’d told him time and time again that she had to be home by ten o’clock. The only reason she was allowed out that late was because she had lied and told her father she was at the library studying on Tuesday and Thursday nights.
    Harold was very good at sweet talking a young and impressionable Reba right out of her clothes. After the clothes were out of the way, he’d tell her to take her hair down. Next came more sweet talking and kisses on the neck as he ran his fingers through her long, thick tresses.
    The clock on the bedside table read nine-thirty. Usually she would have been up and dressed by now, and twisting her hair back up in a bun. And he would be laying on his back smoking a cigarette.
    But this particular night, Harold was in a nasty mood and